The Alliance Summary and Retrospective

As usual, when I finish a major setting element, I work out the summary, the bit that would go in a simplified document so players can just jump straight in and play.

The Alliance took much longer than I thought.  In retrospect, I should have realized the additional complexity of what I was taking on.  Star Wars provides us with what amounts to the definitive space empire, the one which all other space empires tend to get measured.  It's fairly detailed, and it's not hard to expand upon the framework they built.  The rebellion, on the other hand, is something of a disaster as a setting element.  It has precious few details, and what details it has don't always make sense.  Like sometimes it seems to have organization (Rebel Intelligence, Rebel Fleet Command), and other times seems to just be a rag-tag collection of small insurgencies.  It has access to huge ships, but no shipyards or territory to call it's own.  It wants to be FARC, a small guerrilla band that loses itself in the jungle, while also being the Allied Forces of WW2!  And this is only what you can piece together on your own.  The various works on Star Wars just don't go that much into the rebellion as an organization, more as a group of heroes.

Thus, I ended up throwing a lot of it away and starting from scratch.  This created two problems.  First, the Alliance amounts to the opposite of the Empire: lots of heterogeneous powers rather than one monolithic one, which means I'm essentially stopping to right up "all the military forces of the Galaxy that aren't the Empire." While the Alliance only occupies a small portion of the Galaxy, its worlds tend to be representative of any generic, non-alien world you might find, whether it's officially affiliated with the Empire or not.  Thus, I ended up creating Planetary Governments and their associated organizations as well.

The Noble Houses, though, proved the most difficult but, I suspect, the richest.  Where a lot of material so far has been fairly generic, this necessarily gets specific.  I tried to write up a generic house, but such posts proved more useful as advice and rules for handling houses.  As with martial arts or philosophies, it's just easier for me to show rather than tell, and that's what I did.  But this means names, and more names, and titles, which means planets, and it means relics (which require names, and personalities, and historical events) and conflicts and politics.  You know, all the great stuff that really make a game come alive

I hope they work well, not just as fodder for politics and NPCs, but also as "splats" for players who want to be aristocratic and have it mean something.  That, more than anything else, has been what this cycle has been about.  This feeds into the Desiree ("Where do I come from? If I'm a princess, who do I want to marry?  What's the context of my house right now?  What am I worried about?") and Bjorn ("What totally sweet powers do I get?  What sets members of my house apart from members of other houses").  I worry a bit about the Bretts ("Like it's a rebellion, what more do you need to know? OMG politics?!") but Willow will love it, I'm sure.  It did prove that working out historical details in advance helped, though it necessarily expanded that history.

I've noticed that the aristocracy has probably had the single greatest response from my players.  Back during the Imperial run, I offered to let my patrons make signature characters, and the response was very tepid, while people were suggesting aristocratic characters to me almost as soon as houses dropped. Why? Context.  Thus fair I've offered fairly generic tools.  You know what a fleet is roughly like, and how they operate, but one officer can sub in for another officer, which is part of the intent of the Empire.  Even so, the players have very little to grasp.  What makes an imperial character interesting?  What sort of roles might they play?  While with the aristocracy, this is clear. You can see the tensions between various houses, the sorts of roles one might play, and what each member might look like specifically.  This partly arises from the heterogeneous nature of the Alliance vs the homogeneous nature of the Empire, but I think if I want to grab players, when I revisit the Empire, I need to find a similar point of tension and context, so GMs and players can see what their imperial character plays out as without necessarily having to draw on Star Wars sources they already know (we don't want every officer to be Thrawn, every imperial Space Knight to be Darth Vader, etc).

We're almost finished with the first half of Iteration 6 (It only took 8 months!  I had a baby, alright?).  Next: Philosophy!

Cross-Post: Libris Ludorum Ruminates on Houses

Nemoricus, who is one of my most supportive Patrons (also the author of the Psi-Wars primer: I just post what he gives me; and the author of the Psi-Wars bibliography, which I'll post soon; and frequent editor of my material) has been following the houses closely and decided to explore them, noodling through them in a series of four posts that I'd like to share with you, and then comment on.

The Posts

• House Sabine
• House Grimshaw
• House Elegans
• House Kain

Patreon Post: The Fifth House (and an offer)

Who are they?  It's such a mystery!

I had originally conceived of several additional houses, but I stopped myself short, in part because I didn't want overwhelm everyone, in part because I have other things I need to write, and in part because I wanted to give you, dear reader, a voice.

I don't want anyone who read the last couple of weeks to think that this is every house in the Alliance, or that has existed throughout the Empire.  Houses and lineages clutter the galaxy, some lost, some hidden, some still quite powerful. I originally conceived of each house as a piece of inspiration for you, dear reader.  Sabine and Grimshaw are powerful houses at political odds (with Grimshaw as a worked example of what a cadet branch might look like); Elegans gives an example of a house that was powerful, but is no more, and Kain gives an example of a late-coming house, a distinct tradition that got folded into the broader Maradon culture.  That should be enough for you to get started, but there are more possibilities.

As such, I have a poll for all $5+ Patrons (My Companions)!  It offers a multitude of options for a new house, a "hidden" house that either isn't part of the Alliance or isn't particularly well known.  I have no doubt that the vote will be contentious because, like with the Traders months ago, there are so many ways we could go and all of them are right.  So if you vote, and your vote ends up not getting picked, don't despair!  And if you can't vote, but you have a totally great idea, then don't despair!  If you write up your own house, blog it, and then send me the link, I will link it on this blog.  I will even help you, if you like, to put your house together.  The point of this blog, more than anything else, is to help you get your creative juices flowing, so if I can help, I will.

If you're a patron, check it out! If you're not, as always, I'd love to have you.

House of Kain, Part 2

Not every house is going to use psionic powers, especially if we're looking at houses that joined the Empire later.  Cybernetics seems like a natural evolution in a society that makes regular use of force swords.  It also represents a shout-out to the Metabarons, who always have at least one cybernetic part as part of their initiation rite.  That requires a fairly extensive look at cybernetics, and a new catalog.  I don't envision every member of the House Kain as thoroughly covered in cybernetics, but most should have at least one piece.

The House of Kain, Part 1

I wanted to show that not all houses descend from the most ancient of bloodlines.  Sometimes, a businessman marries into a family, or conquered nobility fold themselves into the aristocracy, or a warlord gains legitimacy by joining the the aristocracy.  House Kain is one such example.

I drew my primary inspiration from both Clan Mitsurugi from my own Cherry Blossom Rain and the Metabarons.  Clan Mitsurugi controlled the main access point between two rivals, and protected it ferociously.  I wanted the same for the Alliance: a reason as to why the Empire hadn't just crushed the Alliance already, and thus Caliban and its ancient orbital fortress.  The Empire might defeat them, but it would cost them a great deal and give the rest of the Alliance a chance to respond.  It might bypass it, but the other routes are less practical and more likely to create a scattered fleet more easily defeated.  With the Empire facing wars on all fronts, they can afford to leave the Alliance for now until they have the firepower to overwhelm Caliban and its defenders.

I was introduced to the Metabarons when someone commented that my Psi-Wars reminded him of Jodorowsky.  I haven't had a chance to read the Incal, generally considered his most iconic comic, but I did manage to land a copy of the Metabarons, which suits the aristocracy of Psi-Wars better.

This combined into a ridiculously masculine, over-the-top house of warriors which make for an excellent contrast with the more elegant nobility. They offer an opportunity for a player to play a knight who disdains the elegance of the other families, or who struggles to restore the Alliance to its fighting roots, or creates delightful scandals when a member of the House tries to marry someone from another family.

I wanted a name that didn't sound like a Maradon name (thus a single syllable), but that fit nicely with the names I had come up with for the family members, thus Kain.

House Elegans, Part 2

Tools of House Elegans

Elegans Background Options:

Given the difficult situation of Elegans, you may instead take the Outcast or Wanderer background and simply take your title as an optional trait.

If you choose to take the Aristocratic background, you may add the following:

Traits: Ally (Petbot, 150 points, 15 or less) [6].

Optional Disadvantages: Elegans may remove Wealth (Comfortable) if they wish and replace it with Wealth (Struggling) [-10]

House Elegans, Part 1

Early on, I had realized I couldn't make every house a major power house.  After all, the Empire had gutted many Houses, so I needed at least one example of a house that was circling the drain, trying desperately to gain allies in its fight to regain its estates, or trying to borrow money from the more accomplished houses (I also had the idea for a dead house, one that had been wiped out, as things long gone can be as interesting in a game as things still present, and I still think that's a good idea, but I ran out of room).

I originally conceived of this House as useless courtiers who used plots, machinations and marriage to achieve success, but then I saw Afro-Samurai and thought "Psi-Wars needs that."  The idea of tragic samurai have long appealed to me, and Afro-Samurai represented an alternative take on that, which blends the cultural fusion I'm going for in Psi-Wars.  His tragedy made him a natural candidate to be the inspiration for the House that had lost everything, and so I chose this house.

Empathy and Telepathy make a lot of sense for a house that's all about persuading others to help them, but it's also a great choice for the anime-esque samurai who stares down his opponents and knows an attack is coming moments before it does, so I shifted Empathy from Grimshaw to this house.

Once I knew I was going to use an African character as inspiration, I could dig into one of my favorite characters, Eshu Elegba, as further inspiration (hence the name "Esau Elegans"), as my handle here is "Mailanka" which is a reference to a Changeling Eshu, which was my favorite game (and story within the game) of my youth.  Thus, the House gained a tradition of trickery (appropriate to a house with telepathy!) and with trying things other houses would not, seeking solutions where other houses would not, becoming the "left handed" house.  I also gave them this tradition because I wanted to have at least one house that had stepped away from the Oracular Order, and the house that had lost all of its territory to the Empire would reasonably be far from the center of the Oracular Order, which means they would be the best candidate for joining the philosophy of True Communion.

This makes them a complex house, one that seeks the assistance from traditional houses despite having a tradition of violating those traditions, a house of warriors whose greatest asset is political manipulation, a house who must cling to the last of their aristocratic heritage, yet knows well the struggle of the common man.

The Cadet Branch Afolayan is a reference to Lady Maya Afolayan, a character by Kelly Pedersen.